Mr. Balderstone suggested that they should advertise for the lost one; but poor Cecil was now where no advertisements would ever reach him.
CHAPTER XIII.
BY THE MORAVA.
Sunset, red and glowing, in a lovely land where a long spur of the Balkan mountains overlooks the current of the Morava, and where fair fields of rice and maize, hemp and tobacco, cover the upland slopes, for it is early in September, and the days are of great heat still. The golden shafts or rays of the setting sun shot upward from the flank of the mountain range, and shed their ruddy gleam upon the shining river. Slowly sank the glorious sun, as if reluctant to quit the strange and terrible scenes it was leaving: on one side the camp and bivouac of an army, with its fires for cooking and scaring wild animals, its piles of baggage and arms, groups of soldiers in thousands; on the other, the awful débris of a newly-fought field, covered with killed and wounded men and horses, broken caissons and gun-carriages, drums and standards, pools of blood in which the flies were battening; and paler then grew the upturned faces of the dead, as the last segment of the sun disappeared, and the brightness it left behind began to deepen from gold and red to sombre violet in the plain, though light yet lingered on the mountain summits.
In the tents and around the fires, men spoke little of the artillery duel that had preluded the conflict, of whether the Servians had broken the armistice, or the Turks had done so by opening with their guns, and little even of the victory; for the soldiers fresh from it and flushed with triumph and carnage, Servians and Russians alike, spoke only of the gallant but nameless British volunteer who had saved the life of the general, the terrible old Tchernaieff, and that of his chief aide-de-camp, the gallant Count Michail Palenka, and who had been made a sub-lieutenant on the field, and decorated after it with the gold cross of the order called the Takovo of Servia, and welcomed back with shouts of,
'Dobro—dobro! Ghivo—ghivo! (Well done—long life); hourah!'
In one of the terrible charges of cavalry, led by himself, Tchernaieff had his horse killed under him by a cannon shot, but this volunteer had remounted him on his own, and also dragged Count Palenka out of the terrible mêlée.
The Turkish horse were led, not by a Pasha or other officer, but by a frantic dervish, wielding on high a long staff, furnished at the end with a shining brass knob, and shouting:
'Allah is here! Allah and the angels who fought at Bedr!'
The Servian Hussars and Lancers, with the Russian Dragoons, advanced to join issue in the charge for a third time, not sorry to exchange close quarters for a desultory carbine-fire. Both sides came thundering on, the Lancers with their spears in the rest, the Dragoons with swords pointed to the front, and all with their horses well in hand, till within a few yards, when they let them go at racing speed, and dashed with terrible force and fury among the Turkish squadron.